STS grad is one of just eight Alberta students to receive award

Kamran Shukoor receives Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medallion for his contributions to youth advocacy and public service.

Former Strathcona Tweedsmuir School student Kamran Shukoor was one of eight students to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medallion earlier this month. The award honours students who have contributed to their communities through exceptional citizenship, leadership, public service, and voluntary endeavour. The eight students chosen each received a medallion and a $7,000 scholarship.

"All the students in Alberta do really great work, so it's really humbling to be in the top eight for this award," said Shukoor. Shukoor was chosen because of his work to promote civic engagement among youth. His journey began when he was in Grade 6 and made a pitch to the Calgary Foundation for a grant of $5,000 for a company called Windmill Microlending, which gives money to small businesses so they can take off.

"That was my moment where I sort of realized that ordinary students like me could... be agents of real change," explained Shukoor. After that, he became the editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper and president of the student council. With a taste of government, Shukoor then ran for Calgary's honourary mayor in 2025 on a campaign focused on greater youth involvement.

He won the position and spent the day with former mayor Jyoti Gondek. Shukoor shared that the biggest change from his day as mayor came when he advised the podcast Calgary Conversations to advertise on social media to increase youth engagement. His current work focuses on protecting youth from online harm, and he even advised Minister Marc Miller on Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act.

To further his work in this field, he is doing research on gaming addiction in adolescents at the University of Calgary lab. However, that is not where Shukoor is pursuing his education as he is studying medicine at the Medical University of the Americas in Saint Kitts and Nevis. "I hope to be a physician one day... specifically in psychiatry, where I can hope to deal with these rising harms of social media, gaming addiction, and the advent of AI.

I think it's really important that, through my work, I'm able to impact someone's ability to stay in their mind, to preserve their biological intelligence," he said. While all of his volunteer opportunities hold a special place in his heart, Shukoor said his work at the Library and Archives Canada was extremely impactful. There he did research on First World War soldiers and shell shock, which he found similar to his area of interest.

"We used to send really young people to war into the trenches, and it really impacted their ability to think and their ability to, their intelligence, their consciousness, their state of mind. I think that really draws some parallels for me where we see children being exposed to danger today as well, but it's in a different landscape. It's social media and these addictive algorithms where we see real harms taking place, like exploitation or addiction, especially the gambling-like features in gaming," he explained.

With all these accomplishments behind him, and the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medallion in hand, Shukoor said he's only fueled to do more. "You feel proud for about two seconds, and then you realize it's just reaffirming the work that you already do, and it's really giving you that motivation to keep doing the work that you do. And so it's really going to inspire me to just keep doing the work that I do, keep representing youth at the table and giving them a say."